Thailand's First Twitter Wedding
A while back when discussing the future of technology in Thailand, an interviewee assured me that whilst the technology may be the same, the nation of Siam will develop its own, distinctive usages. One has arrived already, the Twitter wedding after @vinegargirl and @kengdotcom tied the knot yesterday, Sunday 10 January 2010.
While using the internet and social media before and after a wedding is common place these days, using it in real-time whilst the wedding is taking place is certainly less conventional.
Headlines and eyebrows were raised in December 2009 when American Dana Hana infamously 'tweeted at the altar' creating the first Twitter wedding, first instance of a twittering groom, the first 'you may tweet the bride' headline, etc, etc.
Credit to @kengdotcom and @vinegargirl, know offline as Keng and Aom, then for no cheesy tweets, they did things differently, Thai-style.
The couple used Twitter to communicate with friends and spread pictures on the day. Branding at the wedding included their Twitter handles and there was even a hashtag,#aomkeng, to follow the conversation and the rest is history, already indexed by Google thanks to the wonder of real-time search.
Some guests even checked in on FourSquare.
Having recent got married I have pretty strong opinions on the privacy of wedding pictures and other information. Whilst my wife and I regularly put our photos into the public domain of the internet we have kept our wedding collection private - sharing only a few select pictures.
For us, our photos, particularly the official pictures, are special, once-in-a-lifetime images to be treasured. For these reasons we've kept them offline, to ensure they are a little more sacred and in our control - QED see a few of Aom and Keng's wedding photos below.
Despite my disagreement and initial thoughts (a little excessive though they may have been) a part of me does understand Aom and Keng's motives.
Social media and Twitter in particular is about bringing people together and increasing communication. Putting a hashtag on Twitter encourages guests to tweet generates chatter and shares images. Hopefully not at the expense of more traditional socialising.
Guests' photos, video and accounts of wedding find their way on to social networkings in the long run just not within minutes of being taken.
Whether it is a mark that Thai people are less afraid of privacy issues online or just their total adoption of technology, it will be interesting to see if others in Thailand will follow Aom and Keng in embracing social media.
That said, were I to do my wedding again, it would stay offline and hashtag free.
The writing was on the wall back in April 2009 when Aom and Keng made a wedding presentation video which can be found on YouTube and a range of other sites which take its content.
